Neverending song
by NoBuddy
Summary: The saga of three angels trying to save the world without losing their souls. Light and shadows, laughs and tears, love and hate altogether; in one word - life.
1. Prologue: Elemental

**This is what I've wanted to do all along. This is what I wanted to begin with. The story of the three friends: Sephiroth (Crescent), Genesis Rhapsodos and Angeal Hewley. Now I finally do. Whoever may want to laugh or cry or get hurt or comfort each other together with us, welcome on board. Here we go!**

**If you want to know how the chants sound, I recommend you the movie 'Nell' with Jodie Foster. The little girls' chanting there is how I envisioned the thing.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing of FF7. Then again, I own nothing whatsoever. But hey, „**_**nihil habenti, nihil deest**_**"!  
****(Still, Iarba - the one called 'Tonberry' by Genesis - is MY creation and nobody else but Glau is entitled to use her apart from me)**

**NEVERENDING SONG**

**Prologue: Elemental**

It was night already and they were all alone. Four small kids trying to hearten themselves, all gathered in one bed, scarcely lighted by a nightlamp that was casting more shadows than rays of light.

And mom wasn't there. She had said she would return before getting dark, but she hadn't so far.

Crawling beneath the comforter, playing hide-and-seek, they pretended they didn't care. They merrily messed up the bed covers, worming their way through the warm and cosy layers of soft material, they battled with pillows and tripped in their cheerfully colored nightgowns, decorated with moogles, that even the boys were wearing.

They seemed to be around the same age of four or maybe five and they looked completely different one from another – one of the boys was kinda sturdy, with pitch-black locks of hair falling straight to his shoulders, another one was small and lean, with unruly hair glistening with an auburnish hue in the sparse light and the third had a long mane coming over his face and eerily floating around him like fine threads of quicksilver. In the cold moonlight pouring through the window, he seemed to have descended with the pale moon's silver rays, like an aerial little being. And there was also a girl, with seemingly dark hair, sometimes looking like a bundle of burnt grass, slightly waving around and sometimes deceptively seeming to lengthen into long waves, fugitively reflecting the light with a rusty hue.

Brothers they were, all four of them, though as different as the elemental forces of the world – the silver one the ice, the reddish like the fire, the black-haired as the earth and the girl was hard-to-get and tricky like the wind.

They knew and thought nothing of that. They were just a bunch of small kids trying to support each other and fight the sorrow and the fear over being alone, without their mom to protect them against the terrors of the night.

They knew there was a certain one – the greatest of them all – and it would come again tonight. The woman with long white hair swarming around her like a nest of snakes, staring at them with dead eyes through the window and sticking her bluish face to the glass, like a spider silently watching its prey.

They would have to face the horror all alone. And the house would not protect them. While still outside the walls, the woman with cold lifeless eyes would try to crawl inside their minds to turn them into aliens like herself, to swallow their very own souls, the gossamer of light that were their inner beings. They couldn't let this happen. They had to fight. It was important.

Four kids in their brightly colored nightgowns, four elemental forces at the centre of the world. They ran outside, holding their tiny hands and darted through the bushy garden. Dark trees obscured the moonlight everywhere around and tall weeds waved over their path, but at least they were friendly and didn't try to block their way.

In the farthest corner of the enclosure stood the carousel. There they ran – small barefoot silhouettes, their feet trampling the grassy ground.

They used to call it ‚carousel', but it wasn't the usual kind with little animal figures to ride and all the stuff. It was just an obsolete-looking cage of rusty metal bars with faded paint, mostly peeled, that spinned around an axle – the kind of thing still to be found on older playgrounds – but they knew very well that in fact it was a magic carousel to ride between the worlds.

So they sneaked in, each one of them taking a place in front of one of the four larger bars that were the main frame of the globe. They took their hands again, all four of them making a circle and started to balance on their feet, setting in motion the slightly stiffened mechanism.

On and on they rocked and the carousel went spinning faster and faster, until everything had turned into a blur – the dark night, the pale stars like tiny points of light and the moon, large and white, turned into a magic ring encircling their magic vessel. Their mother had taught them so many old songs and soon they started to utter them, one by one, answering to each other, singing in canon, then chanting all together, then starting all over again. Children's refrains, seemingly banal and childish – powerful ancient chants in fact.

_Chick-a-bee, chick-a-bee,  
__Don't cry, little bumblebee!  
__If we hold onto the light  
__We will carry through the night._

Small soft voices rose ceaselessly into the night air, uttering ageless words, levers to move the worlds hidden in riddles.

_...if we hold onto the light  
__We will carry through the night –  
__Everything will be alright._

The little one with moonlight hair shook his long strands and a thick ice barrier seemed to extend in all directions as far as the horizon went.

_One, two, three  
__Make the world stand still with me..._

The other one with blazing mane rose his hands, still clutching at the others' on both his sides and a wave of fire erupted, amazingly only adding to the wall of ice instead of shattering it, while the third one with dark straight hair threw his head backwards gazing at the sky and clusters of planets rushed to gravitate around the swirling carousel, gathering in a tight circle to let nothing pass beyond them.

_Fire red, fire red,  
__Got no place to lie your head..._

_Dust and sand, earth and stone,  
__Caught and hardened to the bone._

Then at last came the girl, largely stretching her hands as if to open some huge gates or maybe to embrace the world, starting with her three brothers...

_Chase the darkness, clear the skies,  
__Let the sun come back and rise –  
__Let the light open your eyes!_

... and suddenly furious swirling winds brushed over the frail-looking cage and roared whirling like mad, until everything melted in a green blur, stirring like an ocean with them caught inside in their bubble, while they rose their voices together:

_Throw the quoit, throw the quoit,  
__Which of us is more adroit?  
__Find the needle in the hay,  
__Make the green grow up from grey!_

_Each of us we're strong but sole,  
__All of us we make a whole._

Maybe the dark hours of night have passed in the blink of an eye or maybe they kept on crawling as usual – they didn't get to know. For them it seemed as if everything only happened in a few minutes, nothing more – and yet as if an era of neverending fight and pain swept over their frail forms and made them so much older and wiser all the same. On and on they went chanting their seemingly childish refrains, shattering the world with their powerful magic, changing it forever.

_Chick-a-chick-a-chick-a-bee,  
__Don't cry, little bumblebee!  
__We can hold onto the light,  
__We can carry through the night.  
__Everything will be alright._

At long last, dawn erupted from its other plane and poured over the wild garden again. When sun emerged from the horizon and shone above the trees, they stopped their chant and each gazed at the others. Again, they were just four small kids in long nightgowns and barefoot on the metal floor of the carousel, still chilly from the night. The magic globe had turned again into a rusty enclosure with large discolored surfaces. The red-haired boy let out a high-pitched giggle, showing his sparkling teeth through a lopsided grin; the sturdy one with raven locks smiled quietly gazing at the sky with blue irises seemingly stole from it, while the girl silently leaned on the bar behind her and closed the eyes letting herself be bathed by the warmth and the shine.

The child with silver hair gazed at them, while still holding their small hands in his own. The redhead and the girl were on each of his sides, the black-haired right in front of him. They were his family and he knew he loved them and they loved him back. They were a whole, all four of them and they could turn the world together. He would never let go of them.

* * *

A sturdy little boy of maybe five, no more, stirred in his bed and lazily opened sleepy eyes, brushing a hand through raven locks. He yawned and stretched, then tried to snuggle again beneath the comforter. His elbow hit a warm soft mass and promptly a muffled wail was heard. He sat up startled, quilt sliding down his waist while another cry of protest at the loss of warmth resounded next to him. In a glance he took in the sight of the open window with the curtains slightly waving in the crispy morning breeze, then he looked beside him and watched the small bundle laying there in his bed. Another child with soft white skin and a mop of auburnish hair falling over his eyes was cuddled there right next to him, his narrow face partly buried into the large pillow and his thin-looking body, what little could be seen of it, clad in a bright-colored pajama with purple apples and some broadly smiling froggies. He too stirred under the thick covers and raised his ruffled reddish head, blinking sleepily into the haze.

„Morning already?" he mumbled dazedly.

„Uh-huh.", nodded the other. „You had some nightmare again, Genny?"

The redhead rubbed his eyes with one small hand, scratching his mop of hair with the other, while the raven-haired child wondered again how he could do both things at once.

„Um... don't remember.", the little one yawned. „But now I dreamed again about us and the magic carousel!"

The other threw him a wary look, biting his lip. Genesis had again that dream. It came to him every now and then and each time the thread would break before the end, leaving the dream loose and unfinished.

Genesis tugged at his sleeve impatiently, almost startling him.

„Angii, this time it hasn't stopped. I saw it all!", he almost whispered excitedly, gazing at him with shiny eyes. „And the night was over and we were there in the carousel, all of us. And we did it, we chased the dead woman away and we stayed together, us and Tonberry and Sephy. We stayed together!"

Angeal only put his arm around Genesis' shoulders and squeezed him reassuringly, closing his eyes with a quiet smile, while a bright ray of sun sought its way to their bed, minuscule grains of dust dancing in the light.

* * *

Somewhere else, far far away on another continent, in a cubicle with a glass wall, not even half the size of their sunny bedroom, another small form stirred and blinked disoriented, gaze slowly focusing on the scarce sight. White empty walls, save for the glass one. A pale-looking child sat up on the thin mattress, reluctantly rubbing still closed eyes and brushing silver locks away. No bright-colored pajama, no funny-looking imprints on his bed cover. There wasn't even a bed in fact, only a mattress with a plain white sheet, the paperlike use-and-dispose kind mostly utilized in labs and hospitals.

He gaped at the wall across him with a blank face. He had just had that weird dream again. It kept coming back for some time now, always the same. And it kept breaking at some point, leaving him longing and confused. He saw himself together with three other kids and seemingly they were all brothers. He saw trees and the sky – with stars and clouds and everything – and they were living in a real house and wearing clothes with many colors. They were his family and loved him, all of them.

. . .

And there even was a _mom_...

. . .

It was all just a nonsense.

Why did he keep having those stupid dreams in the first place?...

He wasn't a real boy. He wasn't even human. So why dreaming of that?

He was just a lab specimen. An enhanced one perhaps, but that was that. He had never set foot outside the labs and there were no windows there, to see the sky through them. He didn't even know how the sky or the trees really looked like and if they existed to begin with after all.

He lowered himself back onto the mattress and closed his eyes again, trying to ignore the cameras silently pivoting to prey on his every move.

It was just nonsense, really.

* * *

**A/N: Come on, now, make my day! Come with me in this journey. Too bad we can't select more genres when we post a story, cos for this one I should've chosen not only friendship, but also humor, drama, hurt, comfort and so much more. Cos life is each and every one of these AND much more. And this goes for selecting more of the characters too, cos we talk here about all three OWAs: Seph, Gen and Angeal. And whoever else's around them. Hojo included. (At least I can promise you he won't like it!)**

**Me, I'm gonna like writing this. I just hope you're gonna like reading it. But whether you will or won't, please let me know.**

**P.S.: Woops! For whoever has fried his brains over the Latin quote from the disclaimer: 'Nihil habenti, nihil deest' means 'He who owns nothing, lacks nothing'**

**And another thing: If some of you wonder what was with little Genesis waking up in Angeal's bed, I definitely think you should read my 'Any other day', gahaha! Cos you see, my fics work together usually, even if you can read them separately.**


	2. Part 1: Diver 1st song

****

**This is what I've wanted to do all along. This is what I wanted to begin with. The story of the three friends: Sephiroth (Crescent), Genesis Rhapsodos and Angeal Hewley. Whoever may want to laugh or cry or get hurt or comfort each other together with us, welcome on board.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing of FF7. Then again, I own nothing whatsoever. But hey, „**_**nihil habenti, nihil deest**_**"! ****Still, Iarba - the one called 'Tonberry' by Genesis - is MY creation and nobody else but my friend Glaurung II is entitled to use her apart from me**

**NEVERENDING SONG**

**Part I – ****DIVER. 1****st**** song**

"…_I've become so numb without a soul  
my spirit sleeping somewhere cold"_

Evanescence – „Bring me to life"

The high steep cliff stood right above the abyss. It was the last line of resistance land put against the raging assault of water. Large boulders lay fallen at its foot and more were still detaching from the precipitous wall and diving into the deep with thunderous splashes. Waves ceaselessly broke at the foot of the cliff and, despite its dizzying height, sometimes they reached its upper edge sprayed in a cold mist.

The place was deserted – and a gloomy one as well. Noone ever came there. It was beautiful though, beyond ordinary daily beauty. Wild and dark. A place for broken or tormented souls, seemingly.

Especially at dusk.

He stood there on the very edge of the fjord, gazing aimlessly at the horizon. Shapeless rags of clouds lay spread over the sky like bloody reminders of a fierce battle.

Nothing could be read on his stone-still face. Nothing of what was really going on inside him.

But what was there, inside him?

Nothing.

Of course he wasn't crying.

Of course.

He never did.

What was the point in doing that? Crying was for the weak, they had told him that a long time before. _**He**_ had told him that years ago.

Yet that wasn't the reason why he was not crying now. He wanted to. He wished so badly he could just let go of it, let his too-long imprisoned tears fall down on him. Like humans did.

Let them shower him like a downpour, flood everything and let him drown in that ocean of sorrow.

He just couldn't.

He didn't dare to.

Because, somehow, he was sure they would know. _**He**_, that frightful man, would know.

He kept gazing aimlessly at the tormented sky, while the strong wind was wildly blowing his long strands around him, trying to push him over the high edge.

In the blazing light, his hair looked blooded. And if his pain and emptiness could spill out from him like blood from a wound, then it would have been. Everything around would have been painted blood-red. Yet in that place the sky, the sea, they already looked that way and maybe that was why he kept coming there. Because it was as if his own sorrow had erupted there long ago, staining, tainting the whole place and now it fit him; it became his own. He belonged there in that sea of blood. It was a place for him – and him alone. Where he could drown in his own hollowness and try to lose himself in it, to become one with the whole nothingness around.

Years of lifeless life. All those years when he didn't really live, he just existed. A mere animal pushed forward and driven by the daily routine of the labs.

At the time he didn't think anything of himself. He didn't even consider himself human; that thought had never crossed his mind.

How could he have thought of that?

His world, back then, was clearly divided in two planes. The humans were those walking freely all over the place. They didn't look perfectly alike, but they all wore white lab-coats over other various pieces of clothing. On the other side there were the animals, him included. Animals were inferior beings, created only to serve as testing material for the humans.

Animals didn't wear clothes; of course, why would they? Only humans did.

Animals lived in cages all of their lives. They didn't think or speak, nor read or write – and never left the labs. He saw many of them born there and then he saw them dying. None of them died of old age.

He was there too. He could never remember living anywhere else and he didn't even know that world could mean more than those labs. For all he knew, the universe was made of labs, with humans in white coats and animals like him in cages.

He knew he was a different species though.

He had never seen anyone like him in the labs. For one thing, he was wearing clothes too. Just a dull grey overall made of paper-like fabric and some elastic-bonded bags for his feet, but he wasn't naked like the other test specimens. And he looked very close to a human. Yet he didn't regard himself as one, because he knew all too well why he was treated differently.

He was poisonous to the touch.

Deadlier than any snake, it seemed. The overall was only a protective means for the humans, to avoid getting in contact with the lethal substance he was sweating through his whole skin.

Apparently many of the humans loathed him for that. The Professor had repeatedly experimented with his poison, making him touch various animals and even a few people and studying the time it took for them to get merely nauseous, severely sick or even die. Half a minute of his touch in the heart area would kill a well-built, healthy man.

He had been called ‚the freak'.

He never thought much of that either at the time. Most probably it had to be a name connected to the species he belonged to and thus he didn't take it as an insult, which now he knew it had been. He didn't expect them to care for him, nor hate him either for that matter. Animals weren't to be cared for or hated. They were there only to be used.

Still he could remember one human that had treated him differently. In a pleasant way. That had been years before, but he could still recall it. He rarely forgot anything.

At the time that one had been _The_ Professor and his name was Gast. Professor Gast. He used to come into his cubicle and talk to him, especially late at night, when all was still and quiet.

When he lay there sick after the mako dips, The Professor would come and hold his little hand. And, even though he had to wear a thick glove when he was doing that – and the mere touch of that glove made his already sensitivized skin burn even worse, the child was grateful, he couldn't say why.

It didn't last too long though.

One day – or better said one evening, because the evening was the moment when most of the humans working there were leaving somewhere else and others came to take their place, fewer ones though – one evening thus, The Professor came into his cubicle when he was just about to go to sleep and did something he had never done before. He took him in his arms and held him close against his body. The child had no idea what the meaning of that gesture was. He only knew that usually human touch on him meant cuts and injections and other painful things. Even The Professor had to hurt him sometimes, though he was always addressing him in a tender voice when he did it, to soothe his fright and pain. Furthermore, that particular time The Professor wasn't wearing his usual protective gloves and that was in fact what made the child strain and raise his palms instinctively to try to stop the man from touching him, to keep him at a distance. But the scientist had still held him tight against his chest while he kept whispering sorrowful words that he as a child couldn't really comprehend, but that he could never forget either. And after all these years, they were still carved into his mind like hot iron imprints:

„_I am sorry! I am so sorry!__... What have we done to you?... What have we turned you into?... You would be better off dead. I am so sorry... We are all monsters here..."_

And his tears fell on the child's pale face.

Then he was gone. For good.

After his departure, during that year there had been many changes in the way things went inside the Lab World. One of Professor Gast's assistants took his place and became _the_ Professor.

His name was Hojo.

Then they had all moved to another place. Somehow the child had the impression that the new place was quite far from the previous one. Not being able to picture great distances, he couldn't say how far. He also had no memory of the moving in itself because he had been drugged and when he woke up, he was already in the new labs. And everything was different there – the walls, the so much larger spaces, the light, the instruments, the computers, even the air. People were different too. Only two or three remained from the old team that he knew, the others were all alien faces to him. Here there were much more of them and they acted even colder than the ones he used to know.

The other assistant of Professor Gast, doctor Hollander, was nowhere to be seen as well, ever since they had moved.

The child was six years old.

* * *

**A/N: I owe you all an apology for the long wait. You probably thought that I must be dead or something, huh, the few of you who read the prologue and waited for more. No, I'm still here, but I had some hellishly busy months and, even though the first chapters are written already, my betas are busy too with exams and this kind of stuff. But I can assure you this is going on. Slowly maybe, but it IS moving.**

**So stay tuned for more and leave your reviews please, so I'll know whether you like this or not and what you do/don't like.**


	3. Part 1: Diver 2nd song

****

**This is what I've wanted to do all along. This is what I wanted to begin with. The story of the three friends: Sephiroth (Crescent), Genesis Rhapsodos and Angeal Hewley. Whoever may want to laugh or cry or get hurt or comfort each other together with us, welcome on board.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing of FF7. Then again, generally speaking 'being' is better than 'owning'. Methinks. And HP belongs to his rightful owner too. ****Still, Iarba - the one called 'Tonberry' by Genesis - is MY creation and nobody else but my friend Glaurung II is entitled to use her apart from me.**

**NEVERENDING SONG**

**Part I – DIVER. 2****nd**** song**

"_I've been sleeping a thousand years it seems…  
without a thought without a voice without a soul…"_

Evanescence – „Bring me to life"

_Professor_ Hojo was no stranger to him. He had been there ever since he could remember – a moody man with sudden fits of rage and no mercy for the animals. He too had the habit of talking to the child while he was experimenting on him, but it was as if he were addressing in fact to an audience, presenting his work and scientifical achievements.

Hollow words pouring over him like a wave of meaningless sounds.

Pokes and needles and the blood squeezed from him, filling tube after tube.

Mako tanks. The painful shrieks and cries of the other animals while they were tortured. His own large, void eyes reflected in the walls of the tanks while he was desperately swimming inside them – anything to get his mind off the maddening burning that was eating him alive.

Professor Hojo's creaking voice snarling at him, saying something about his overlong silver hair, then the clapping sound of scissors biting at his mane right next to his skull and his eyes, his mouth wide open in a silent cry of agony as the pain tore his body apart from head to toes just like an electric discharge, even more breaking than the mako torture. He had fallen unconscious on the floor, but when he came around, late at night, his hair was back, seemingly even longer than it had been.

The lab tech that had happened to discover this grumbled something that sounded like: „Oh Gaia, here we have another Gary Potter here!" Or maybe it was Harry Trotter? Or Parry… He couldn't tell for sure; he was still dizzy and shocked.

After that Hojo had cut it again for another few times trying to discover what could cause that strange phenomenon, as each time the hair grew back to at least its usual length over the night. Was it the distress caused to the child? Was it some chemical compound? And how came that such a tremendous growth wouldn't leave the child all drained up from the lack of nutrients that had to be consumed inside his body to achieve such a thing in only a few hours?...

Snarling.

Snarling. Monotonous preaches about tests and results and experiments and more experiments. Snarling again. Pain and tests. Tests and pain.

Woken up in the middle of the night and strapped on the cold metal tables. The shrieking voice snarling.

He had trained himself not to care, not to even notice. He could detach himself from the voices around until they all melted in a muffled mumble that kept fading away. Instead he would concentrate on the computer screens and the data flowing on them. Noone had taught him how, of course, but he could comprehend them easily, they weren't meaningless to him. And a childish curiosity made him wonder every time where the information creeping down the screen went when it reached its lower edge. He had tried to imagine the ways and subways, the halls, the alleys on which the data would keep going. Would they creep along forever? Would there be a place for them too to stop and rest at least at night? Were there, inside the blocks of memory, some cages for them too, to keep them from fleeing and wreaking havoc around the virtual space? Finally, at some point, his mind just kept following the data further on, along the wires. He could perceive their low whirring noise, the intermittent buzz of the cables meandering along the floor, the walls, _through_ them. He just wanted to know where they went. Maybe in another realm beyond the walls of the Lab World?...

This went on for months under the professor's very own oblivious eyes, until the day came when he just found himself projecting his mind into the computers and moving from one to another, from room to room. Ever since he just lay there, wherever he was put, with empty, shiny mako eyes on a moronic face while he kept reading hungrily like a starveling, moving inside the machines, creeping along the wires reduced to an improbable bit of information traveling along with the data sent from here to there – anything just to avoid the sensory deprivation he had to go through day after day.

Shortly after, he came to know every bit of information stocked in the computers, piece by piece. Any data newly entered would reach him within nanoseconds. In time he could even divide his attention, if need arose, to follow the activity in the labs while another part of his mind would flow throughout the data thoroughfares.

He could follow every account and protocol of each and every experiment carried out in the labs and the chilling thing was that at some point they just became more and more comprehensible to him, to the point when he finally could point out with an impersonal, mathematical accuracy the errors that caused them to fail day by day. How ironic!

There was nothing about him there though. Not even the results of the tests carried out on him day after day weren't there. The professor scribbled them on a clipboard and at night he would take it with him when he left. It took some time to notice that, because for a long while it had been of no concern to him. He only acknowledged the fact at some point when, summing up the tons of scientific work recorded in the computers, he was finally hit by the idea that, while every animal in the labs was registered there and everything about it scrupulously noted from birth to death, his file just wasn't there.

He roamed both the real and the virtual space, through the cameras and inside the vast colourless electronic nothingness bit by bit, from room to room, futilely running through the cables and reading everything again and again. He knew them all, the Lab World had no secrets to him anymore. Every single testing room, every storing facility, every cubicle and cage, as long as the silent cameras were watching them all – and he was watching as well through them. They once had creeped him out – now he was their silent master.

But there was nothing to be found. As if he didn't even exist.

* * *

**A/N: Whew! Seems to go smooth so far. I just hope I'll be able to keep as steady a pace as possible from now on too.**

**Don't forget: /winks/ to be sure you won't miss the updates, you just have to mark the 'story alert' option and you'll be notified via email. But reviews will be even more appreciated, because I need to know your opinion on this. A nice day to you all.**


	4. Part 1: Diver 3rd song

******This is what I've wanted to do all along. This is what I wanted to begin with. The story of the three friends: Sephiroth (Crescent), Genesis Rhapsodos and Angeal Hewley. Whoever may want to laugh or cry or get hurt or comfort each other together with us, welcome on board.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing of FF7. Then again, generally speaking 'being' is better than 'owning'. Methinks. ****Still, Iarba - the one called 'Tonberry' by Genesis - is MY creation and nobody else but my friend Glaurung II is entitled to use her apart from me.**

**NEVERENDING SONG**

**Part I – DIVER. 3****rd**** song**

"_I need some sleep  
"It can't go on like this…"_

Eels – „I need some sleep"

It was so weird.

The dreams he sometimes had. They were so weird.

He knew what dreams were. Animals dreamed too, of course. He had seen them many times moving restlessly in their sleep and kicking with their legs like running. He had heard them sobbing or moaning in fear or, on the contrary, releasing short cries of pleasure. He wondered if they, too, had dreams as weird as his.

Because he dreamed of places that could never exist.

Some scary endless spaces that didn't seem scary at all when he dreamt them. An endless blue. Some things like cotton rolls moving on it. A shiny ball called sun.

Some very complex structures with intricate, ever-changing patterns made from zillions of pieces of... something, in colors he had never seen in the Lab World. In his dreams they were called _trees_ with _leaves_. Seemingly that was how the world really looked – at least there, anyway – and only _houses_, on the inside, were limited by walls and floors and ceilings just like the rooms of the Lab World. And he regarded all those as perfectly normal when he was there.

Sometimes even he himself didn't look as usual. It was as if he were watching that strange world through the eyes of a human child just the way he was looking into the other rooms through the cameras planted everywhere. A human child with short reddish hair and a cheerful demeanor. Such as his had never been. In those moments it seemed that both him and that boy were together in one body and their minds touched each other in an unsettling way, sending shivers of thrill and distant calls of pure joy along the deepest recesses of their spirits and melting both of them into one as if they were some eerie sort of twins.

It couldn't be real, of course. He sometimes wondered why he would ever dream such things and how his mind could create that totally distorted alien world.

Most of all he wondered why he would dream of being human and have _brothers_ and _friends_ and be... _loved_, whatever that would really mean. It wasn't a sane thing to do.

He had tried to smother them, to drown even the memories of endless spaces and warm light and trees.

To chase away the faces of those human kids calling him from afar, sneaking inside his mind on every possible occasion. The grinning red-haired one. The sturdier one, with a raven mane and serious mien. The girl with her deceiving look. The ghostly mother.

And that... _love_ thing…


	5. Part 1: Diver 4th song

**This is what I've wanted to do all along. This is what I wanted to begin with. The story of the three friends: Sephiroth (Crescent), Genesis Rhapsodos and Angeal Hewley. Whoever may want to laugh or cry or get hurt or comfort each other together with us, welcome on board.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing of FF7. Then again, generally speaking 'being' is better than 'owning'. Methinks. Still, Iarba - the one called 'Tonberry' by Genesis - is MY creation and nobody else but my friend Glaurung II is entitled to use her apart from me.**

**NEVERENDING SONG**

**Part I – DIVER. 4****th**** song**

"_I've been living a lie, there's nothing inside  
Bring me to life…"_

Evanescence – „Bring me to life"

„I know you can speak," professor Hojo addressed him, pacing to and fro with hands clasped behind his back along the table on which the child sat in silence.

„There is nothing wrong with your vocal chords, specimen alfa; they are in perfect shape. Your brain activity ranges within the normal limits – ahem, whatever is regarded as ‚normal' for you, anyway. So I know you are not stupid either. You understand me perfectly. You are fully capable of articulate speech, both physically and as far as your IQ is concerned. You just won't do it. Well, personally I don't give a damn on this; I never did. In fact I must admit you made my life so much easier by not uttering a word all of these years ever since you became able to. I am NOT fond of children whimpers and whinings, nor do I need to be distracted from my work by endless silly questions or childish blabbering. I must also admit that your determination to maintain your self-control during the experiments and not giving me unnecessary distress with excessive wails and howls of so-called pain is to be appreciated. It will certainly be of use to you in the future as well. Only the weak cry – and you are not a weak one. Therefore, the time has come for you to move on towards the next step in your life..."

Changes again. Even more drastic ones, though he had not taken them that hard at the time.

Life was monotonous inside the labs. It had been so for as long as he could remember. The daily experiments, the tests, the mako dips. His horizon had only enlarged when he had become able to go beyond the walls through the computer network's wires. Reading the newly entered data day after day was a welcome distraction from the routine, especially when he lay strapped on a table expecting something painful to come or, again, when he lay on the mattress in his cubicle, trying to busy his tremendous mind with anything at all. Occasionally he would even go as far as to take over the computer-controlled equipment and make it perform devious things instead of what it was supposed to, such as mixing the chemicals in wrong ways to create new substances with dangerous or exhilarating effects, manoeuvering the animals in weird ways or even ordering the simultaneous opening of all the electronic locks of the cages, causing an absolute chaos until the animals could be gathered again and put back where they belonged. All this while he was just lying in his own cage, watching the whole hubbub with impassive, totally disinterested eyes on a completely expressionless face.

Then, all of a sudden, changes swept over him like what he would learn to know as a tsunami.

At first there were, all of a sudden, lessons for him. He had been moved again, this time only into another area of the labs, but it was an area in which he had never had access before – and for good reason, because only humans went there. He knew how it looked though, as he had seen it through the cameras before. It was the resting area, containing a few rooms where the personnel could take a break and get some rest when the working hours extended during some important project. One of those rooms had been arranged for him alone and, though in terms of size it was quite small, compared to the cubicle where he had lived before, it seemed so huge to him. It had a real bed, like the ones only humans had, a low chest of drawers and a small desk with a chair and a computer placed on it. He had been given human clothes too, as he could find out by looking into the drawers. That night, as he lay in his new too comfortable human bed with pillow, real sheets and blanket, he almost trembled with fear already. He knew how it was to sleep in such a bed from his dreams, but this wasn't supposed to ever happen! It was… as if his dreams had spilled everywhere around him, splattering his life with spots and puddles of unreliable, surrealistic and yet palpable illusions.

Dreams weren't supposed to do that. They should have stayed in their realm of nothingness – mere moving shadows on non-existant walls. They weren't supposed to invade the reality and drown it so terrifyingly.

Lying in the simple, narrow bed – yet so luxurious to him – he dove into his new computer and swallowed its content entirely, oblivious to the fact that it was only going to get much worse than that. Next day he knew it all, though he hadn't even turned it on yet.

He was stunned, nauseous and scared.

There had never been anything else but scientific materials in the computers inside the Lab World, not even in the terminals placed within that resting area. It was obvious for him for a long time that there had to be other areas where they left at some point, but in the network there had never been anything at all about humans and their life, where they lived, what they did in that mysterious part of the Lab World when they left in the evenings. If those areas they lived in had computers at all, they weren't connected in a network with the ones he knew and roamed and thus he hadn't had access to them. He had tried to follow any wires and penetrate the walls – but they had proved to be unreachable. It seemed all the networks in their part of the labs were self-sustained and never connected with whatever other places the humans went to when they were not working.

And now, all of a sudden, the new computer was filled with information that caused him to make the most terrifying discovery: forget his poor new bed and anything else for the matter! His whole universe as he knew it, The Lab World, suddenly proved to be just a mere dot on the map of a huge real world he'd never known of!!

The sky? The endless blue? Seemingly it was there, somewhere outside.

_**Outside.**_

With cotton balls called ‚clouds' and all.

Trees? Certainly. On endless areas, stretching farther than he could ever imagine, called ‚forests'.

Buildings? Everywhere.

Suddenly his wildest dreams, his _**dreams**_, of places he had never been to, were the daily reality.

How could he ever dream of them? How could he see so clearly places he had never set foot in and things he couldn't even comprehend entirely??

He hadn't seen them yet for real, but there were clips with them in that computer. And they looked precisely as he'd seen them in his dreams!

There were detailed lessons about the human world, its geography, history, biology, population, society with its structure and organisation and politics – and something huge and omnipresent called ShinRa.

He was meant to live in that world he knew nothing about. A dumb and helpless animal from the labs, forcefully thrown among the humans.

And he was terrified.


	6. Part 1: Diver 5th song

**This is what I've wanted to do all along. This is what I wanted to begin with. The story of the three friends: Sephiroth (Crescent), Genesis Rhapsodos and Angeal Hewley. Whoever may want to laugh or cry or get hurt or comfort each other together with us, welcome on board.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing of FF7. Then again, generally speaking 'being' is better than 'owning'. Methinks. Still, Iarba – the one called 'Tonberry' by Genesis – is MY creation and nobody else but my friend Glaurung is entitled to use her apart from me.**

**NEVERENDING SONG**

**Part I – DIVER. 5****th**** song**

"_I've been sleeping a thousand years it seems  
got to open my eyes to everything"_

Evanescence – "Bring me to life"

He was a failure, he knew that well enough. Incapable of comprehending the complex human behavior and socially inept.

He had to use the articulate language now, like any other human did, and he never knew what to say.

People outside the Lab World rarely exhibited the precise and linear body language the ones working inside the walls used on a daily basis – a set of facial expressions and movement patterns he'd learned to interprete without fail throughout the years.

Everything now was tricky and misleading and the heaps of manuals on Psychology and Sociology and Politics and whatever else were of very little help to him.

Many times he had found himself regretting the simple and comfortable routine of his Lab World, the times when he didn't need to speak to anyone and it was just fine that way because, of course, specimens were not supposed to do that in the first place – and neither was he expected to.

It used to be so easy to communicate with his fellow specimens, the animals inside the cages. Their shrieks and cries and squealings, the barks, the warks, the chirps were clear as day to him and even if he never produced a sound himself, he could answer them without fail and the teeth uncovered in a sneer or downright snarl, the backbone curved, the body strained or the narrowed eyes were always something comprehended by both parts along their ‚talks'.

It wasn't as if he didn't understand, as if he didn't know that all this was to be expected for quite some time. Maybe he had lacked the overview before and therefore didn't see it coming, but now, thinking about everything, it seemed so obvious: he was special. There was something for which they needed him – and him alone. He hadn't been brought up just to be used like all the other animals. He could regret his past life and the routine of the labs – and it was ironical enough that they could cause him to regret a time when he had been treated like any other test subject and a life with neither horizon, nor future or any kind of expectations – but more and more connections clicked inside his mind with each moment passed and now it was more than obvious to him that he had been either created or merely enhanced in order to be of use to someone. To whom? For what? Those were the questions.

But, the same way he knew their experiments went wrong every day only by following all the data processed in the computers, he also knew they had acted terribly wrong in what concerned him.

One didn't even need to be some genius in order to see that, he thought. How would he ever be capable of fulfilling any of their plans out there in a world he knew nothing about? He should have been brought up among people, like one of their own kind, to be able to comprehend them and act alike. Not to be forced to learn about them from heaps of books and huge amounts of files in the computer and other such too stupid things. Books could NOT contain everything he needed to know. If they made mistakes so easily, even in this place that was probably supposed to be a special one in order to bring up, among other things, a special creature like him, how could he be sure the books themselves were correct?? He couldn't. Or, even if – which he strongly doubted anyway – they were correct, how could these people possibly imagine books and programs were enough for such an enterprise? Take the animals for instance. He had lived among them ever since he could remember and he also knew every bit of information about them stocked in the computers. And he realized well enough that the whole quantity of records, as huge as it might have seemed, was far from showing at least half of what he knew about his fellow specimens from his own observations and 'talks' with them.

Were people that stupid?

Was he a genius compared to them?

Were they aware of that?...

It didn't matter. Not for him anyway. He could very well be a genius compared to them, that didn't help too much at the moment. Even if he was such a genius, he had still been crippled by their stupidity and turned into a failure, incapable of comprehending the complex human behavior and socially inept.

He could be the best mind on that planet for all he knew.

But still, beyond all that, he was just a frightened, overwhelmed child.

**

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A/N: Your opinion is always welcome


	7. Part 1: Diver 6th song

**This is what I've wanted to do all along. This is what I wanted to begin with. The story of the three friends: Sephiroth (Crescent), Genesis Rhapsodos and Angeal Hewley. Whoever may want to laugh or cry or get hurt or comfort each other together with us, welcome on board.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing of FF7. Then again, generally speaking 'being' is better than 'owning', methinks. Still, Iarba – the one called 'Tonberry' by Genesis – is MY creation and nobody else but my friend Glaurung is entitled to use her apart from me.**

**NEVERENDING SONG**

**Part I – DIVER. 6****th**** song**

"_All this time I can't believe I couldn't see  
kept in the dark but you were there in front of me"_

Evanescence – "Bring me to life"

They kept bringing more and more books. He kept ‚swallowing' them one by one. Still silently.

New files and programs were poured in the computer almost each day and he went through the entire history of Gaia, the ancient civilisation, the rise and then the descent and extinction of an old race that supposedly had inhabited the land before the people did and then the centuries of human development and wars and times of peace and wars again...

Strategy and tactics and battle accounts and peace negotiations and diplomatic debates and nations forming and lines traced on the land...

What a stupid thing, he thought. To draw a symbolic trace on the land and say „this is _**my**_ part. That is yours. You are not allowed here on _**my**_ land."

How could one say such an incredible stupidity?? How could land belong to somebody when they were all born on it and none of them brought into the world the tiniest grain of it? When land was the huge thing that he had just learned it to be, a ball so great that one couldn't even perceive its roundness, a place that could contain billions of people and still have large areas uninhabited by anyone, how could people claim to _**own**_ it?? The boy just couldn't understand.

And the wars. Why??

He had found out that the universe was an endless place with stars and planets, but they had never mentioned other civilizations inhabiting them. Maybe there were and they just omitted this thing considering it of no importance – or the omission was intentional. And maybe they were alone or didn't know of anyone else. Whichever was the case, life in itself, in a universe full of huge balls of fire and dust, silently revolving in the freezing void, seemed such a miracle!

Each and every bit of life was a miracle. The grass he could see on the screen – and feel too in his dreams –was a miracle, stepped on and unnoticed by the people. The birds, the trees, the animals.

The animals. His fellows.

Dozens, hundreds, thousands of mice, rabbits, dogs and cats, monkeys, various birds, frogs and anything else, a featureless mass, all the same. Killed in the labs on a daily basis, chopped, gutted, electrocuted, disected while still alive, stared at through the microscopes, dissolved, liquified, burnt and powdered. His fellow animals.

One rabbit. Just a test material. Ten rabbits. All the same.

No. It wasn't like this. No. He knew. He had known every rabbit, every mouse, every frog and monkey that had ever passed through the labs. They weren't the same. They could look the same maybe, but even so, he would never take one for another. He knew them, he talked to them, they answered to him. Each one was unique. Each one was a person. How could they treat them like a faceless herd??

Alright, so they were blind and stupid and never cared to learn the animals' ways of communication, so they had no idea how far they were from the truth.

But what about themselves?...

The wars… The child could not understand and this frightened him. Most probably he didn't have all the information to make something of this. There had to be a reason. There had to be a sense. And yet he could not see it.

People were unique as well. There weren't two alike. Each and every people who died was a definite loss. There will never be another one alike. They were lost for good. They seemed to be the creation's higher point, they had the power over themselves and the planet, they could communicate, they could make themselves understood. They could change the world together, to make it a better place for everyone. And instead they had chosen to kill each other in wars.

This kind of waste, this sense of destruction, of themselves and everything around them, was beyond his understanding.

Everything in fact, when it came to people's reasons for their actions, seemed incomprehensible to the child. The things for which humans would go as far as to kill each other sounded so incredibly twisted and unworthy to him that he simply thought that either he was just not capable of understanding the human ways, or they were merely a whole race of murderous perverts.

What would they want from him, teaching him all the time about those endless webs of deceit and mazes of diplomatic tricks and more wars and more killings?

What were they going to make him?

A General of their armies, or what??...

* * *

**A/N: Ahem! I can promise you the dialogue will start to show up from now on...**


End file.
